She would see no other harvest such as this. Another season and the wheat fields of the Strip would be invaded by the riffraff that always came south for the harvest and followed it north. Then the tumbleweeds would be gone. Now they had rallied to lend a helping hand to one of their own kind, one man who had understood. And as she watched them toiling at these unfamiliar tasks she experienced a thrill of sympathy for the men who had helped to make homes possible for others and now found no place in the new scheme of things for themselves. For the riders of the waste places had ever been the vanguards of civilization. Fur traders had skimmed the riches of their calling from a vast territory and departed, leaving it no more habitable than before; gold seekers had prospected the hills and passed on but the cowhands had stayed to make the West habitable for those who should follow. And now that the followers had come there was no further use for the ones who had led the way. As the summer advanced the girl observed how swiftly the ranks of the grub-liners were depleted as they were forced to realize the fact that spring work would never open up for their sort again. Families of Cherokees still prowled the countryside at will, pitching their teepees along the streams, the squaws begging incessantly from one homestead cabin to the next. The settlers, expecting nothing better from the Indians, were prone to tolerate this sort of nuisance but looked with increasing disfavor upon the nomadic white riders that drifted about in much the same aimless fashion. Yet they were not parasites, these men, even though the newcomers so viewed them. Rather they came from a proud fraternity. In grub-lining they had been merely following an ancient and respected custom of their kind and when they now found that this no longer prevailed they desisted. It was only through Carver’s insistence that grub-liners still continued to drop in at the Half Diamond H. Their presence created the one break in the monotony that seemed closing in upon him. He made that clear to each comer and urged each one to return. But another old custom was dying and the number of grub-line riders who turned up for meals at the Half Diamond H was depleted by half before the summer was ended, as these jobless ones drifted into other lines. One by one, the girl watched them go and she wondered how they would fare in these new pursuits which they adopted, not from choice but from necessity. The majority would sink to oblivion, drudging at tasks which they had always despised. But there were some whose names were slated for fame in the annals of this new Southwest.